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How to Add Candy to Your Math Lessons

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Have you thought about using candy in your math lessons? It doesn't have to be candy-any little manipulative will work. Come see how you can weave candy into all of your math lessons with this list of ideas.

Adding candy to any lesson will always engage students, but why not get some math out of it in the process? We have found our students are very motivated by food. For many of them, it is a treat they don’t get often. Just add candy to sweeten up your math lesson.

There are lots of different ways to incorporate candy into your math lessons, so we’ve gathered up a list of ideas. Once you get started, you’ll see the possibilities for yourself.

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How to Help Your Students Master Decimal Operations

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We find that many students struggle with decimal operations because their understanding of decimal number sense has a few holes in it. Come learn some of the ways we support our grade four and grade five students before, during and after learning to add and subtract decimals. And come grab a free set of decimals place value task cards to get you started.

Some students have difficulty working with decimals. Others misunderstand how place value helps when working with decimals operations. And other students struggle with number operations in general. Read on to find out the ways we support the different math learners in our classroom before working with decimal operations.

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Books For and About Powerful Women

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Show students some amazing books for Women's History Month. We use these books all year to show students how important studying women's history is. Come check out our book list and some of the reasons these books are so important.

Each year in Canada, we celebrate Women’s History Month in October. This is in line with the International Day of the Girl and observing the anniversary of the Person’s Case, which took place in Canada on October 18, 1929. Women’s History Month was officially declared in 1992 by the Canadian government to celebrate the achievements of Canadian women.

In the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom, Women’s History Month is observed in March. This is because many important women’s rights events happen during March in the United States. It took until 1987 for the American government to make it an official observance. International Women’s Day is in March as well.

It doesn’t matter when the month is. Women’s history should be taught as part of your overall history plan. Young girls and boys need to see women represented in all types of jobs and occupations. They all need to be taught that gender does not reflect how a person should be treated, paid, or ruled by laws.

That is why we try to have books that represent women and girls to the students in our classroom.

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How to Learn About Wetlands Without A Pond

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Are you trying to teach wetlands in Alberta but there isn't a nearby pond and you can't take a field trip? That's exactly why we wrote this series of lessons, activities and assessments. Come take a look to see if they can help you get your planning done so you can enjoy the activities along with your upper elementary science students.

Teaching students about wetlands can be a real challenge when you don’t have access to a pond or field trips to go to a pond. Each year in Canada, we struggle with winter sneaking well into spring, shortening the time available to teach the unit outdoors. If we try to teach the unit in the fall, we often end up with snow within a few weeks of starting the unit. So how are students supposed to learn about wetlands when they can’t actually get to a wetland?

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Challenge Your Students with Writing Activities

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Are you looking for some ways to get your upper elementary students writing every day? We've created this list full of ideas, resources and time-savers so your students can write something every single day. We've even got a few free writing ideas that you can take straight to your classroom. Come take a read!

There are generally two reactions that students give when it is time for writing activities in the classroom. Half are usually excited and the other half is filled with dread. We’ve been through lots of different writing programs over the years, been to hundreds of hours of professional development to teach writing and have seen the same pattern over and over again.

Most teachers don’t feel like they know how to teach writing. Is that you? Keep reading.

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How to Use Interactive Notebooks to Teach Number Sense

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Interactive math notebooks are one way we teach number sense in our upper elementary classroom. Math class hasn't been the same since we started using interactive notebooks. Yes, they are work, but the benefits are HUGE! Come see what we do to make it work and get some ideas for yourself.

We use interactive notebooks in our math class as part of a unit on number sense. We have found creating a reference book of concepts and procedures that students can refer to when working in math helps them build confidence and develop independence.

We’re not going to lie. They are a lot of work, but the working is meaningful. We found on average our math grades improved and students were able to retain more of their learning year over year. Read more to find out how we use them in our classroom as one way to develop number sense.

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You’ll Love These Exciting Winter Classroom Activities

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Kids make snow angels on the snow.

Winters in Canada are long, so technically, you could be doing winter classroom activities for most of the school year and you’d still be on track weather-wise.

We tend to use winter classroom activities from November through February, especially around Christmas, since many of our students come from different religious backgrounds. Many do not celebrate Christmas, so everyone deserves to do fun activities that aren’t connected to a specific faith or holiday.

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How to Celebrate Halloween In the Classroom

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A boy is dressed up as a doctor. Are you looking for ways to celebrate Halloween in your upper elementary classroom? We gathered up some of our students' favourite activities for you to try. Come take a look!

Halloween is such a special time for many students. In past years, we’ve had parades and assemblies and handed out candy. There was a time when bobbing for apples was a good idea. Now, since the pandemic, the thought of countless students scrambling to bite into an apple floating around in a tub full of mouth germs…ugg.

Our classroom is usually bustling with parent volunteers who help out at different Halloween-themed stations. Still, some years, there might not be as many parent volunteers available as you need, so it’s nice to have easy alternatives in your back pocket.

If your school and students are celebrating Halloween, here are some generally easy ways to have a little fun.

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How to Set Up Your Reading Comprehension Schedule

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If you use our weekly reading comprehension sets (or maybe you want to learn more), come see how we schedule the first month and get some ideas for how you can use these reading and grammar activities in your classroom whether your instruction happens in the classroom or online.

If you are struggling with reading instruction in your classroom, you’re not alone. Upper elementary teachers are often not trained in how to teach students to read, despite the fact all the students in their classroom are unlikely to be reading at grade level. Setting up a reading comprehension schedule is one way to get on track.

We designed our Weekly Reading Comprehension Skills specifically for our students. We needed reading material for science and social studies that were at the right reading level and needed to teach grammar and reading skills. You might want to read this post about how we came up with them: Add Great Content to Your Literacy Lessons.

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Add Great Content to Your Literacy Lessons

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There are so many things to teach and just not enough time for it all. We started using content from science and social studies to teach grammar and reading comprehension. Game changer! Come find out what we did and how we did it in our upper elementary classroom literacy lessons (even during distance teaching).

It took fifteen years of teaching and professional development before we felt confident teaching reading to students in upper elementary. Reading is one of the most important skills any teacher is responsible for, but it is often taught by stabbing at strategies until something works-only to find it doesn’t work for the next student. Literacy lessons were hard to design and we didn’t really know where to start.

The most important thing we’ve learned is that reading comprehension skills are also skills related to grammar, word parts, word families and patterns, and writing. The same skills are used in a variety of ways.

If a student missed one of these skills, they trip over it in everything other subject. By the time students get to the end of Grade Three, if they aren’t reading at grade level, they are statistically unlikely to catch up. So, what is a teacher to do?

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The Secrets of Social Emotional Learning for Kids

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Do your students have difficulty regulating their emotions? Do you need strategies to help teach students about feelings and how to calm down? This is the post for you. Come read the whole post and get practical strategies you can implement today.

We believe firmly in social-emotional learning (or SEL), self-regulation and teaching students about feelings. Students today struggle with identifying feelings, managing their emotions and staying focused.

Let’s not get into all the causes of why some students are unable to describe and manage their feelings, but more and more instructional time becomes wasted unless we intentionally teach students about to self-regulate.

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Easy to Use Classroom Activities for Earth Day

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Are you looking for activities to do with your upper elementary class? We pulled together Earth Day themed lessons and activities (but they can be used any time of year) for your upper elementary classroom. Come check out the resources, books, and ideas to use right away.

Every day in our classroom is Earth Day. It’s part of our science lessons to learn about energy conservation, so it’s easy to make sure we talk about the importance of conservation regularly.

One year a fellow teacher thought it would be a great idea to print a little paper globe for each student in our school (that’s several hundred) and write a “thank you to the Earth” type sentence.

I don’t often speak up at meetings, but I couldn’t resist this one. Isn’t it counterproductive to teach students about conservation by wasting all that paper?

Everyone agreed, but NO ONE had any suggestions on what we could do instead. And that’s how we came up with this list of Earth Day activities (and why you should try some of them).

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